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Curvature of Earth posted:I'm a wee bit more optimistic. Or in this case, apocalyptic. Because as I posted earlier, that cataclysmic event is coming. Suburbia will die regardless of whether you or I do anything, and regardless of how hard suburbanites fight to preserve it. It's simply not financially sustainable. The 1950s/60s-era suburban infrastructure is already reaching its end-of-life, and there isn't the money to replace all of it. This will compound with each decade, until the steep costs of maintaining sewers, roads, and water lines past their intended lifespan forces cities to pick which subdivisions they allow to crumble and which they desperately try to save. This is America, so states will bail out the wealthier, whiter towns as long as they can, and local governments will abandon the brownest and poorest neighborhoods first, but min-maxing a failing system does nothing to change the fact that it's a failing system. the whole of suburbia won't die. the suburbs are still gaining population. we're just going to let the suburbs die in the places where, coincidentally, we stick all the poor urbanites being displaced by gentrification
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Apr 13, 2016 22:23
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Popular Thug Drink posted:in my opinion we're already pretty screwed. street networks and land ownership/use, in the absence of cataclysmic events like land-erasing disasters or complete political revolution, tend to be locked in over long periods of time. a ton of virgin land was developed around american cities in the early 20th century for primarily automotive access. it would take sustained political and economic investment over many years to convert this fabric, one piece at a time, to something more pedestrian friendly, and given how we can't even commit to paying the necessary costs for automotive infrastructure... Ironically (or maybe not), places like Detroit have the most potential for hitting the reset button on everything.
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Apr 13, 2016 22:30
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Eskaton posted:Ironically (or maybe not), places like Detroit have the most potential for hitting the reset button on everything. That's what they're doing right now.
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Apr 13, 2016 23:05
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Cicero posted:Here are some common complaints about bike share: london basically found out that painting a blue strip on roads and putting bikeshare stations everywhere doesn't cut it for bike investment, but at least theres a few separated grade bike paths coming in 
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Apr 13, 2016 23:22
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Eskaton posted:Considering my only image of the Mt. Pleasant area is Amish horse auctions at the 4H grounds north of the city, that seems like a big culture shock (I'm talking my parents have taken their horses to the Incredible Dr. Pol before he was famous levels). Weidman, the town where Dr. Pol (whose show I wasn't aware of) is located, is a lot like my hometown so you could say it was a bit of a culture shock. At least I already spoke the language when I got here. Quorum posted:bikeshare Rennes' bikeshare program is pretty neat, borrowing a bike is free for the first 30 mins and if you want you can switch bikes at a station and restart the clock. You can also rent electric bikes for 120€ for the year and at the end of the year you can buy the bike for 365€, which 80% of users end up doing. Reading about bikeshare programs in Wikipedia did yield this little gem about the system in Paris which is pretty  quote:80 percent of Vélib's original 20,600 bicycles have been destroyed or stolen. Some Vélib' cycles have been found in Eastern Europe and North Africa, while others have been dumped in the Seine River, hung from lampposts, or abandoned on the roadside in various states of disrepair, forcing the City of Paris to reimburse the programme operator an estimated $2 million per year for excess costs under its contractual agreement. Soviet Commubot fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 23:28
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On the subject of bikeshares, I still haven't seen a good solution to the fact that there's no infrastructure to provide helmet rentals (which would be gross anyway). Maybe I'm taking the indoctrination of my childhood too seriously, but that seems like an irresponsible thing. That issue actually kept me from using the bikeshare in Montreal unless I was drunk enough to not care, because I was/am retarded.
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Apr 13, 2016 23:28
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Popular Thug Drink posted:the whole of suburbia won't die. the suburbs are still gaining population. Irrelevant. That's like arguing that rising sea levels won't affect Miami because its population is growing. What people want doesn't matter if the fundamentals can't support it, anymore than the popularity of home ownership couldn't stop the housing bubble from collapsing. Popular Thug Drink posted:we're just going to let the suburbs die in the places where, coincidentally, we stick all the poor urbanites being displaced by gentrification That's not how it works. In my home state of Oregon, the Portland Metro area comprises about 47% of the state's population. The Salem metro area contains another 10% or so, and the Eugene metro area another 9%. Realistically, only Portland has the resiliency and tax base needed to prop up suburbs undergoing financial collapse, while Salem is the state's capital so it won't be allowed to die. So we're looking at about 40% of the population that lack the political and economic power to support themselves in the face of the oncoming financial cataclysm. This isn't small potatoes. This isn't a problem that can be dismissed with handwaving about minor population shuffles. This is one of Strong Towns' points: practically every town of every size in the U.S. has hitched their wagon to suburban paradigm. Most of the examples they bring up aren't New York City, or Philadelphia, or St. Louis. It's the over 16,000 towns with less than 10,000 residents. Those are the cities that are boned. (Reminder that America is only 80% "urbanized", and that's using a comically loose definition of "urban".)
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Apr 13, 2016 23:33
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PT6A posted:On the subject of bikeshares, I still haven't seen a good solution to the fact that there's no infrastructure to provide helmet rentals (which would be gross anyway). Maybe I'm taking the indoctrination of my childhood too seriously, but that seems like an irresponsible thing. Yes, most Bikeshare programs grapple with this issue. Outside of some sort of huge helmet vending machine I don't really see a solution though. Capital Bikeshare hands out helmets with their logo and colors on them like candy, in any way they can figure out how. I got one from a staff member, as soon as he found out I was a cyclist who didn't have one he basically threw it at me. 
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Apr 13, 2016 23:36
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PT6A posted:On the subject of bikeshares, I still haven't seen a good solution to the fact that there's no infrastructure to provide helmet rentals (which would be gross anyway). Maybe I'm taking the indoctrination of my childhood too seriously, but that seems like an irresponsible thing. Generally, bike share bikes have a much lower rate of death than cyclists in general despite the helmet issue. I think in large part it has to do with speed. Bike share bikes are heavy and geared to cruise at 10mph, not the 20 mph of a road bike.p
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Apr 13, 2016 23:36
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Curvature of Earth posted:
You seem to have a lot of assumptions that aren't well spelled out. For one, this: Curvature of Earth posted:(Reminder that America is only 80% "urbanized", and that's using a comically loose definition of "urban".) Why is it comically loose? What are other nations' definition of urbanized, and how do they differ from that? I think you'll find it's not as different as you'd believe it. For another, you seem to be ignoring a lot of factors for cities' survival. Eugene, for example, has a major research institution which draws a lot of money and high paying jobs to the area. Similarly, that's why Corvallis (a city 1/3 the population of Eugene) is allowed to survive and thrive.
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Apr 13, 2016 23:45
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PT6A posted:On the subject of bikeshares, I still haven't seen a good solution to the fact that there's no infrastructure to provide helmet rentals (which would be gross anyway). Maybe I'm taking the indoctrination of my childhood too seriously, but that seems like an irresponsible thing. nm posted:Generally, bike share bikes have a much lower rate of death than cyclists in general despite the helmet issue. I think in large part it has to do with speed. Bike share bikes are heavy and geared to cruise at 10mph, not the 20 mph of a road bike.p
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Apr 14, 2016 00:32
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Curvature of Earth posted:Irrelevant. That's like arguing that rising sea levels won't affect Miami because its population is growing. What people want doesn't matter if the fundamentals can't support it, anymore than the popularity of home ownership couldn't stop the housing bubble from collapsing. kind of an odd metaphor given that after the housing bubble collapse owner occupied detached single family homes are still the most common form of housing Curvature of Earth posted:That's not how it works. In my home state of Oregon, the Portland Metro area comprises about 47% of the state's population. The Salem metro area contains another 10% or so, and the Eugene metro area another 9%. Realistically, only Portland has the resiliency and tax base needed to prop up suburbs undergoing financial collapse, while Salem is the state's capital so it won't be allowed to die. So we're looking at about 40% of the population that lack the political and economic power to support themselves in the face of the oncoming financial cataclysm. This isn't small potatoes. This isn't a problem that can be dismissed with handwaving about minor population shuffles. oregon's a weird example though given that it's the only state in the us with strong regional planning directives, meaning the state has squarely placed the burden of managing city-suburb relationships on the metro governmental authority. really every state is weird since they're all different, here in georgia the state underwrites a ton of the cost for roadways and the state does everything it can to undercut regional planning power and preventing atlanta from annexing or spreading transit
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Apr 14, 2016 01:01
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computer parts posted:You seem to have a lot of assumptions that aren't well spelled out. For one, this: Sorry. You're right, what I meant by "comically loose" isn't clear or helpful. Checking Wikipedia, there's a pretty wide range of definitions of "urban areas"; the U.S. Census Bureau defines "urban areas" as census blocks with 1,000 people per square surrounded by blocks of 500 per square mile, while Japan has a minimum of 10,000 people per square mile, which is a hefty range for defining "urban". But these definitions aren't particularly helpful in any debate about urbanism. This is something most urbanists and anti-urbanists, ironically, can agree on. Anti-urbanists love to point out how America isn't "urbanized", but suburbanized, while I don't think a single self-proclaimed urbanist would look at my suburban town of Albany, Oregon and call it "urban". My point was that, even using a definition of "urban" that includes quintessentially rural towns like Sweet Home still means 20% of Americans aren't a part of any metro area, and barring direct state or federal intervention, won't be able to endure any major financial problems. computer parts posted:For another, you seem to be ignoring a lot of factors for cities' survival. Eugene, for example, has a major research institution which draws a lot of money and high paying jobs to the area. Similarly, that's why Corvallis (a city 1/3 the population of Eugene) is allowed to survive and thrive. A city's tax base would already account for these factors. Possessing a university, however prestigious, does not fix insolvency. I concede that Eugene and Corvallis are doing okay—for now. They both admit to needing a few extra million dollars per year to keep up with road maintenance, to name just one classic source of infrastructure liabilities ($6.7 million per year for Eugene and $2.7 million per year for Corvallis), but in proportion to their existing tax revenues the numbers aren't worrisome. But that's a big "for now", and if they followed the same pattern of development done by cities like Rockford, Illinois or Lafeyette, Louisiana, they'll definitely face major trouble down the road.
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Apr 14, 2016 02:10
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Oh God I'm turning into Cingulate.
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Apr 14, 2016 02:11
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Popular Thug Drink posted:the whole of suburbia won't die. the suburbs are still gaining population. we're just going to let the suburbs die in the places where, coincidentally, we stick all the poor urbanites being displaced by gentrification It's probably more accurate to talk about suburbia becoming post-suburbia than just dying. Not urban by any stretch of the imagination, but not something the local neighborhood association would countenance either. I live in a 24 unit apartment building in unincorporated Cobb County. No setbacks or mandatory parking allowances can really hide the fact that it's far denser than the equivalent single family housing and the residents are far more diverse. This isn't an isolated phenomenon: Every new development has been multi-unit apart from some fee simple townhouses. The nearby Town Center Mall is still attracting shoppers, but they're also floating the idea of sticking higher density office space in the outparcels* instead of more retail. It's still hypothetical but if it happens, it's violating one of the central tenets of suburban land use: Thou Shalt Not Mix Zoning, Especially When It Leads To More Efficient Use Of Existing Parking. Hopefully in the future it leads to things like MARTA running out to here rather than depending on Kennesaw State to provide bus service to the local area. *These are pieces of land adjacent to a larger development which are sold off and developed separately. If you've ever seen a standalone restaurant in a strip mall—especially with its own parking—the restaurant is almost certainly an outparcel.
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Apr 14, 2016 03:46
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With all this talk of fighting the blight they should consult some Borderlanders
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Apr 14, 2016 03:56
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Minneapolis bike share seems to be pretty decent but Minneapolis also has a huge bike infrastructure with bike lanes, bike boulevards and a whole system of off-grade bike trails around town.
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Apr 14, 2016 05:06
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Soviet Commubot posted:Reading about bikeshare programs in Wikipedia did yield this little gem about the system in Paris which is pretty In my home city theres a quite successful bikeshare program. To rent out a bike you have to scan your credit card, which means the bikes very rarely get damaged/go missing. I would have thought this was a fairly standard/easy crime prevention method, I wonder is it not in place in Paris?
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Apr 14, 2016 14:19
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Cicero posted:Helmets are generally seen as necessary in America because our bike infrastructure is horrible. If you look at places with high bike rates like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Munich, etc. practically nobody wears helmets and it's fine. I don't think it really has to do with the bike infrastructure. Even with good infrastructure, accidents happen. I ended up with a concussion when I was a kid, due to another cyclist basically crashing into me as I was stopped. I can't remember if I was wearing a helmet, but I was either lucky to have been wearing a helmet (because I would've got much worse than a concussion) or I should've been wearing a helmet, to prevent the concussion. Most people who don't wear seatbelts are fine, too, right up until they aren't fine any more.
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Apr 14, 2016 15:13
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Blut posted:In my home city theres a quite successful bikeshare program. To rent out a bike you have to scan your credit card, which means the bikes very rarely get damaged/go missing. I would have thought this was a fairly standard/easy crime prevention method, I wonder is it not in place in Paris? Looking at their website, they do scan your card so I have no idea.
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Apr 14, 2016 15:43
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DoctorWhat posted:Why aren't municipal and state bus services getting similar attention in this thread? Recently, for the first time with any regularity, I've begun utilizing NYC's Select Buses and New Jersey Transit and they both function remarkably better than I could have imagined as an avowed Subway User, though the former is of course infuriatingly traffic-dependent. Outside of the east coast, I'm guessing they're all incredibly inefficient and unreliable. Buses get worse fuel economy/environmental impact than cars do when not running at peak times, but they absolutely do need to run 24 hours a day to provide access. However they seem to end up showing up only every 20-30 minutes, and heavy traffic makes them unusable. I need to read up more on how BRTs actually worked successfully in other areas because they sure do suck in Chicago, let alone regular buses that are slower than walking 99% of the time.
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Apr 14, 2016 16:21
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Chicago's bus service is miles better than DC Metrobus actually. I've experienced both.
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Apr 15, 2016 00:08
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mastershakeman posted:Outside of the east coast, I'm guessing they're all incredibly inefficient and unreliable. Buses get worse fuel economy/environmental impact than cars do when not running at peak times, but they absolutely do need to run 24 hours a day to provide access. However they seem to end up showing up only every 20-30 minutes, and heavy traffic makes them unusable. I can't speak for why BRT didn't work in Chicago. I can post pictures of the TransMilenio BRT, though. It's pretty spiffin'.  The TransMilenio BRT in Bogota, Colombia is about as far as you can push the concept of BRT.  The buses they use are gigantic. What you see here is a bi-articulated bus, capable of holding 260 passengers. They're pushing the size limit of what can feasibly fit on most roads. Here's a more distant shot of a BRT station:  You can see the bus lanes are grade-separated. (Well, sort of. There's a very obvious curb, at least.) Notice how the bus lanes expand from one lane per direction to two near the stations. This is specifically to allow buses to skip stations without getting stuck behind buses that aren't skipping a station. Stations are also in the middle of the road, so buses don't have to waste time pulling over to the curb, and are raised to match the buses' floor height, so handicapped riders can board without needing slow, expensive lifts. Like a subway, fares are paid before boarding, and passengers can enter or exit from any of the doors along the side. Good BRT also gives buses signal priority, so buses rarely hit red lights, though TransMilenio happens to lack that particular feature. They also run a shitload of buses. Buses can run tighter headways than the barreling tanks in subways—as low as 13 seconds in TransMileno. All these features combined allow TransMileno's BRT system to handle an average of 35,000 PPHPD (passengers per hour per direction, which is a standard way of measuring the throughput of a transit system). This is a massive number—light rail, by comparison, has a theoretical limit of somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 PPHPD (depending on who you ask) while subways have a theoretical limit of somewhere around 50,000 to 70,000 (again, depending on who you ask). Most light rail and subways only manage half those numbers in practice. As that paper I linked to above states, there are only specific circumstances where light rail is a better choice than BRT. (e.g. No space for four dedicated bus lanes, capacity demands of less than 20,000 PPHPD, and implicitly, possessing the bucketloads of money needed to build a good light rail system.) But cities are reluctant to build BRT because they see rail as inherently sexy and buses as icky. (Which is also the same reason American cities are trying to build mixed-traffic streetcars that are slower than buses—lovely rail systems still look cool and are an easier sell than a good bus system.) Curvature of Earth fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Apr 15, 2016 |
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Apr 15, 2016 01:50
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That's phenomenal, wow.
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Apr 15, 2016 02:16
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Damnit, that's FAR sexier than the stupid light rail system they put in downtown Atlanta. Why couldn't they build that instead of light rail and $10/trip HOV lanes? 
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Apr 15, 2016 03:21
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Curvature of Earth posted:I can't speak for why BRT didn't work in Chicago. This made me realize busses are actually a really good viable solution, IF you builds their support right. But most people just want to throw them into regular traffic or convert existing roads, causing more disruption of passenger movement than actually relieving congestion.
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Apr 15, 2016 15:22
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Curvature of Earth posted:I can't speak for why BRT didn't work in Chicago. I wanted to know more about the BRT vs. Light Rail debate, so I did a quick read of the Wikipedia page and it seemed to say that BRT is usually better than light rail, which is itself a bad sign. Most of the information seemed to come from one study by one organization, iptd.org, which seems to be a consulting company for cities building BRT. So I think I would need more data on why BRT is better/cheaper than lightrail, which doesn't seem like it makes a lot of sense by itself.
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Apr 15, 2016 18:17
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Just read a neat piece on the structuring of suburban office parks and company's continued resilience to change: Why Are America's Most Innovative Companies Still Stuck in 1950s Suburbia? I've always thought it weird how the offices of Apple, Google, and the likes, are cooped up in suburbs that only seem to have access through large highways.
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Apr 15, 2016 23:39
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PT6A posted:I don't think it really has to do with the bike infrastructure. quote:Even with good infrastructure, accidents happen. I ended up with a concussion when I was a kid, due to another cyclist basically crashing into me as I was stopped. I can't remember if I was wearing a helmet, but I was either lucky to have been wearing a helmet (because I would've got much worse than a concussion) or I should've been wearing a helmet, to prevent the concussion. Of course, even when driving was more dangerous, people still drove and didn't do much about it. It's interesting how people can be terrified of some rare dangers like sharks or terrorism or earthquakes, and completely accepting of more common ones like traffic deaths. Neon Belly posted:Just read a neat piece on the structuring of suburban office parks and company's continued resilience to change: The funny thing is that Amazon chose the other way, setting up shop close to downtown Seattle starting like 2010 or so, and I've seen a bunch of people on the Seattle subreddit complain about that, saying that it was selfish of Amazon to do and they should've set up a suburban campus like MS. Cicero fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Apr 15, 2016 |
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Apr 15, 2016 23:53
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Neon Belly posted:Just read a neat piece on the structuring of suburban office parks and company's continued resilience to change: it's just cheaper to construct and operate. basically nobody builds their own corporate towers anymore in the us, tower construction has slowed down a lot and when they are constructed they're built by real estate firms who are looking to rent to various tenants. so if you want to be your own landlord a campus is really the only way to go there's plenty of companies which take the opposite route, and even google bought a massive tower for its NYC office. but if you want to do the ultimite prestige project and build some hyper avant garde architectural thing in america in the 21st century you're probably not building a tower
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Apr 15, 2016 23:56
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Also, if you read the article, it was a reaction against the rowing unionization of urban cities (as well as a move to protect Whiteness). The article also hints at how hosed up cities are because hotshots with money work in the suburbs. If you're driving to work, you never interact with your city. Why should someone who lives in City A and drives to Campus B give a poo poo about the public transit of City A?
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Apr 16, 2016 00:01
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Trevor Hale posted:The article also hints at how hosed up cities are because hotshots with money work in the suburbs. If you're driving to work, you never interact with your city. Why should someone who lives in City A and drives to Campus B give a poo poo about the public transit of City A? this makes sense if you assume people just, like, hibernate in a coffin from the time they come home from work until the time they leave for work. people who make the choice to live downtown and commute to a suburban office probably chose to pay more money to live in a city because they like living in cities
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Apr 16, 2016 00:02
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Trevor Hale posted:The article also hints at how hosed up cities are because hotshots with money work in the suburbs. If you're driving to work, you never interact with your city. Why should someone who lives in City A and drives to Campus B give a poo poo about the public transit of City A?
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Apr 16, 2016 00:04
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Detroit has seen a lot of companies moving back into the city recently. General Motors bought the Renaissance Center in 1996, kicked out all the tenants, and moved their World Headquarters into it. (The Warren Tech Center mentioned in that article is still there and much the same). Compuware (once a major automotive software company) built a new headquarters building in the center of downtown in 2003. Quicken Loans closed their suburban offices and moved everyone into that same building in 2010. Dan Gilbert (QL's owner) has been buying up a bunch of downtown buildings now and trying to get lots of local companies to move in: quote:Quicken Loans moved its headquarters and 1,700 of its team members to downtown Detroit in August 2010, where Gilbert and the company are helping lead a revitalization of Detroit’s urban core.[3] Today, Gilbert-owned businesses employ 12,000 people in the city.[26]
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Apr 16, 2016 02:43
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My city is in the planning stage of a new LRT line, and I just saw an interview with one of our councillors talking about how they don't want an elevated track in the downtown area. As a resident of the downtown area, I would prefer an elevated line to a street-level line (although an underground line would be my preference), to keep the streets and sidewalks clear for normal traffic and business, etc. Could someone with more experience/information than me explain what, apart from cost, is the disadvantage of an elevated line that I'm not considering?
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Apr 18, 2016 15:49
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Just off the top of my head, people sometimes get pissy about elevated rail in dense areas because they tend to block out sunlight and alter the downtown's aesthetics, both of which are usually already at a premium in skyscraper territory. (I mention this because I just talked with someone who complained about it when they visited Chicago's downtown  )
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Apr 18, 2016 15:58
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People around DC were pretty upset when the new Silver Line was elevated through what amounts to a car-focused exurb, Tyson's Corner, as a cost saving measure. Not really sure why it's such a fuss - it already exists pretty much exclusively in the median of a 12-lane road.
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Apr 18, 2016 16:19
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Zero One posted:Detroit has seen a lot of companies moving back into the city recently. I went to Detroit 1-2/year from 2007 to 2013 and nothing of significance was happening wrt redevelopment until after the bankruptcy slash start of the housing crunch; the first two you mention were outliers. Sadly, Detroit's recovery potential is limited by the backward mouth-breathers that run Michigan. Trevor Hale posted:The article also hints at how hosed up cities are because hotshots with money work in the suburbs. If you're driving to work, you never interact with your city. Why should someone who lives in City A and drives to Campus B give a poo poo about the public transit of City A? This is exactly how it was until very recently and how it is in a lot of places, particularly the McMansion burbs built specifically to keep the riffraf away from the HENRYs like Orange County.
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Apr 18, 2016 16:42
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Neon Belly posted:People around DC were pretty upset when the new Silver Line was elevated through what amounts to a car-focused exurb, Tyson's Corner, as a cost saving measure. Not really sure why it's such a fuss - it already exists pretty much exclusively in the median of a 12-lane road.
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Apr 18, 2016 16:50
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RuanGacho posted:This made me realize busses are actually a really good viable solution, IF you builds their support right. The issue with buses is perception. You can move a route at any time; you can't move rails at any time.
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Apr 18, 2016 19:52
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